Wednesday, September 30, 2009

I'm not certain if it means anything, but in this article, about Wisconsin suing the EPA, it says:

In June of 2000, the EPA announced a proposal to loosen regulations limiting evaporative characteristics of reformulated gasoline. It would maintain current use of ethanol as an oxygenate in reformulated gasoline, but allow for increased fuel volatility. This allowance would make RFG production easier for gasoline manufacturers and hopefully cause price reductions in the cost of reformulated gasoline, lessening the price difference between reformulated gasoline and conventional gasoline. This proposal was approved in the spring of 2001.

Thus, with these changes, reformulated gasoline would still be in use with the supposed benefit of reduced carbon monoxide emissions. The question arises as to whether or not the increased use of RFGs with a higher volatility will, in the long run, do more damage to the environment. The National Research Council indicated in its report, "the use of an ethanol-containing RFG with an RVP [Reid vapor pressure, a measure of fuel volatility] that is 1 psi higher than other RFG blends would be detrimental to air quality in terms of ozone"

when ozone levels surpass a certain amount, the gas causes cellular damage inside the plant's leaves, and they become visibly damaged with brown splotches.

The ozone also reduces the rate of photosynthesis in the plant and cripples its ability to grow.

Gee, imagine that! And then there's this:

"In effect the cells have been disrupted...Essentially the photosynthetic apparatus has been damaged."

Such damage could cause large economic losses through reduced crop yields.

Ya think??? This video rambles a bit strangely, but it's interesting to watch.

Try this on for size - what the world will look like after we finish destroying it and ourselves through climaticide.

apocadocs had this link which reminds me, I agree with MindOverBlather, the scientists should reconsider their language and instead of COULD should say WILL as in this snippet!

"a cascading synergy of adverse climate-change effects could outrun snail-paced efforts to reduce of greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels in power plants and transportation sources mostly in developed and developing nations."

Figure 3. Ozone damage on watermelon; notice different degrees of yellowing and necrotic areas as the damage worsens from A through F. Photograph B looks very much like TSSM damage. Photographs courtesy of Gerald Holmes, NCSU Dept of Horticulture.

Yikes, does this look like everything everywhere, or what?! I will be spending days following all the links!

Here is a bit of a message to a friend,

...people cannot bear the pain. They will hold out until the last bitter moment. I am trying, with difficulty, to find a more cosmic, abstract, perhaps molecular meaning to life than what I have always yearned for and delighted in - music, paintings, dance, sex!, food, affectionate pets, FAMILY, starry nights, BOOKS, tears and laughter...

This may well all come down to chemistry at its most basic, and not much else.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

I sent the letter copied below to a number of nurserymen and farmers, who had authored articles in a local newsletter. It appears to have generated some response, although not directly to me, even though I welcome any discussion on this topic. We all need food to eat. Following is my message, to the authors, from last week:

I picked up a copy of Gardener News and notice that many articles are unwittingly describing the effects of gasoline emission poisoning on vegetation. These effects mimic the symptoms of drought, blight, excess rainfall and fungus but are in fact also well-documented to be produced by exposure to atmospheric toxins.

Just because the gasses produced by burning coal, gasoline and ethanol are invisible, it does not mean they are not deadly. The scorched and falling leaves, thin tree crowns and forest canopies, bare branches, and dropping pine needles are ubiquitous in New Jersey and up and down the Eastern Seaboard. The hundreds of trees that were damaged recently in a thunderstorm in New York's Central Park was not from mere weather - the trees are weak, and they are covered with a lichen that is a harbinger of death.

It's quite likely that the relatively sudden and dramatic decline in trees is a result of the mandated addition of ethanol to gasoline.

It's well known that burning gasoline emissions react to UV radiation, creating ozone. It's less well recognized that ozone is very detrimental to plants - and even less discussed is that the damage from ethanol may be worse. Ethanol emits acetaldehyde which is the precursor to peroxyacetyl nitrates (PANS), that are highly dangerous to vegetation (and people: see http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/ClimateHealth4.pdf)

Before attributing this widespread and universal damage to individual diseases, excessive rain, pests, previous drought, and other blights on vegetation, which is what foresters, ecologists, and conservationists usually do, please consider this fact: the leaves of plants in ponds show the identical process of chloration - a loss of the ability to create chlorophyll. In the classic response to ozone and PANS, the leaves close their stomata, basically causing the organism to suffocate.

I would like to direct you to this report http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/430/430-022/430-022.html which describes exactly the condition of vegetation in New Jersey. I would question two statements that I believe may be out of date - one is that some species are more susceptible than others. Currently, it's impossible to find any species that isn't affected. The other is that PANS are less of a problem than ozone.

The evidence of this phenomena is readily detectable in an objective, cursory inventory of any woods, park, back yard, farm, arboretum, mall parking lot, pond, or nursery. It is irrefutable that the composition of the atmosphere is the primary causative agent for what is rapidly becoming an existential threat. Note that there is not one species that normally photosynthesizes that is immune, and that trees of every spectrum of age, and plants in every situation, whether wild or in nurseries, in pots or ponds or in the ground, share the same degree of impact.

If we do not stop squandering fuel we are headed straight for ecosystem collapse and mass extinctions, not to mention crop losses.

I am not a chemist but if it could be determined to be primarily linked to ethanol, we can consider ourselves lucky. We could stop this wholesale slaughter of trees and go back to the slower path of destruction through climate change.

You who are directly involved in agriculture and landscaping should be in the forefront demanding that the government take swift and strong action to enact clean energy legislation, because it is your livelihood that is at stake. Of course everybody who eats, and every species that depends on trees for fruit, nuts, shelter, and shade has everything to lose as well. But you will be the first to be impacted when your crops fail to produce adequate income for you, and people and businesses give up purchasing and planting shrubs and saplings in their landscapes because it will be a waste of money. Eventually they will notice that nothing they install will thrive.

Please fell free to write or call if there is anything I can clarify; and/or visit www.witsendnj.blogspot.com where there are many links to scientific research, and photos documenting the carnage.

Monday, September 28, 2009

I am going to start off with a very pretty wildflower, it might be a buttercup.

I know that all people who are as fascinated as I am with the demise of vegetation have been waiting with abated breath for this report, so here it is - photographs from an actual nursery located in Bernardsville, NJ, where every plant, tree and shrub is living (barely) evidence of fuel emissions poisoning.

On the way to the nursery I passed mature trees that are bare.

When I arrived I found row after row of saplings, their branches thin and the remaining leaves damaged.

And let us please keep in mind, these trees are watered, fertilized and treated for disease and pests.

These are not fall colors, they are scorched and brown.

The nursery is surrounded by large native trees that are equally symptomatic of toxicity.

They aren't supposed to be losing leaves yet. It is just the end of September and evening temperatures are too warm to cause leaf drop.

This trunk like so many others is pasted with lichen.

Conifers and deciduous are all vulnerable.

A row of arborvitae that should be solid green.

A Japanese maple and the leaves.

The leaves of this beech are an excellent example of the stippling that results from cell damage due to ozone.

Here's a link to Warnings of 4C rise in your lifetime - and that's only centigrade, folks.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Every year the Essex Fox Hounds holds the Hunter Trials competition, as a pleasant tailgate fundraiser for the club.

This year, First Daughter who prefers to remain anonymous on this blog and teh intertubes, swept up the awards!

A second, a third, THREE firsts and TWO championships!

Cady is so cute I have to put in two pictures of her. But, she's BAAAAD!

Why is the treeline looking so bare? Well might you ask.

Why are leaves on the ground being gathered and carted off? Aren't they supposed to turn colors, and then, after cool nights, fall on the ground sometime in October?

Here are some brave flowers that are putting on a valiant show in the face of expiring shrubs.

The leaf above is from a sunflower. It isn't turning brown because it is cold - it hasn't been! It's turning brown because evil poisonous gasses from burning gasoline and ethanol and coal, are consuming the atmosphere.

This is a branch from a venerable boxwood shrub, which has a thin layer of leaves on the outer surface, whilst the inner branches are consumed by this lichen.

A charming wet rose on a rainy day.

This ivy shows how the leaves gradually lose the ability to photosynthesize and lose chlorophyll.

The lotus in the pond was my first alert that the primary cause of decline is atmospheric, since the lotus lives in a continuous supply of water, ruling out climate change induced drought. This leaf is indicative of the earliest signs, with it's bleaching of color, and pronounced veins.

This leaf is further along, with brown mottling, from dying cells.

And here we have arrived at the condition most of them are suffering. Just, dead.

Wild asters are in such a plethora of vertiginous plenty, they make me dizzy!

Maple leaves, and a cluster from Japanese Andromeda, clearly demonstrate the damage from atmospheric gasses. The scorching of edges, and the pockmarked stomata, are clear symptoms. CLICK on the photo and the evidence of cellular damage is obvious.

So, some lovely roses for a momentary respite.

And then back to fearsome damage, this is a zucchini leaf.

And here, it should cause consternation, the tiniest ever chestnuts, and the tree's leaves.